Quilts for Kids

Well, A quilt for A kid:

If you don’t know about Quilts for Kids, check it out here: http://www.quiltsforkids.org/

There are a lot of quilting groups and organizations that get together and make quilts for Quilts for Kids, but you can also make them on your own. Either use your own fabric, or contact the organization (click the “Volunteer” button on the site) and they will send you the fabric and instructions for creating a child-sized quilt.

I’m trying to get my employer to add Quilts for Kids to the list of organizations eligible for matching donations and volunteer hours. My company encourages us to donate 10 volunteer hours a year to a non-profit group, so I’m half-way there, since it took about 5 hours to make this quilt.

And, if I can get 9 of my fellow employees (there are about 45,000 of us) to agree to donate their hours (or $100) to Quilts for Kids, the company will match my volunteer hours with a cash donation.

I considered volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, since I think it would be least interesting to build a house for a day or two. Once I found out, though, that I could QUILT for 10 hours instead, there was no turning back. Who knew that volunteering could be so much fun?

Weekly Journal Squares & A Quilt Top

A couple of new 6x6" weekly journal squares; the first is a catch-up from the week we were in Florida for vacation. I created a fish appliqué from hand-dyed fabric and metallic and rayon threads, then sewed it onto a background of commercial fabric enhanced with Dynaflow paints and FMQed with circles:

Next is this week’s journal square. Influences: trying to achieve balance between work and home activities, and my aspiration to remain calm and Zen-like regardless of what my back-to-work experience entailed; beautiful sunny and cool days, and that sense that this might be the final breath of fall before winter sets in (sure enough, the weather has now turned gray and overcast, and we have a cold front coming in); and most importantly, reconnecting with my long-time friend Karla, who years ago introduced me to ceramics (the cup-like vase is in honor of you, Karla!):

The flower is white-on-white fabric painted with Tsukineko inks and appliquéd onto the background; the vase is appliquéd over that. I added some free-motion zigzag stitching around the flower, to create the stem, and around the vase, then some FM straight-stitching on the vase. Then I used some fabric markers to add some varied colors to the vase.

I thought I was caught up with the weekly journal squares, but when I was looking at my log I realized I missed one a couple of weeks ago. I still have my notes from that week, so I'll have to catch up as soon as I have a chance.

The craft room “rebuilding” is going slowly; my formerly-clean worktable is now a wreck, since I had to have a place for most of what was on the shelves (except for the books, which I moved permanently to the bookcases in the living room):

My sweetie did a great job of removing the shelf brackets, repairing the sheet rock, and adding new texture:

and then painting (how awesome is it that we still had the original paint for this room, and that it was still GOOD after 8 years?):

Fortunately, my sewing room is still intact, so I’ve almost finished another quilt top. Once I add the borders, this one will be queen-sized, and will go on our bed:

I’m having a hard time getting the colors correct in the pics of this quilt top, so I’m including pics of the Amy Butler fabric I used:

Whew. I guess that’s enough blogging for now, especially since I justified sitting at the computer all this time by catching up on this week’s episode of “Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!” Now that it’s over, I’m off to find something else to do before my weekend is completely gone.

Tattoo Quilt

I just finished this quilt top from a kit I bought at the Honey Bee Quilt Store a few weeks ago. I justified the purchase when I realized I’m probably going to have to miss the Houston quilt show this year :-(

I saw a completed “tattoo” quilt in the store, and thought it was really cute. When I realized there was a kit, I had to snatch it up. This quilt is made from a pattern called “Perfect Ten” by Swirly Girls Design, because it uses 10 fqs. It went together much more quickly than I thought it would.

I need to buy backing fabric for this one, and it may be a while until I have time to FMQ it, but I think it will be adorable!

Weekly Square #30

Here is last week’s (9/13-9/19) 6X6” weekly journal square:

And, the bare bones of a new quilt I’ve started:

This one is from a quilt kit I bought at the Honey Bee Quilt Store a few weeks ago. I justified the purchase when I realized I’m probably going to have to miss the Houston quilt show this year :-(

I saw a completed “tattoo” quilt in the store, and thought it was really cute. When I realized there was a kit, I had to snatch it up. This quilt is made from a pattern called “Perfect Ten” by Swirly Girls Design, because it uses 10 fqs. It’s been fairly easy to put together, and I should have the top finished in the next couple of days (depending on how much I energy I have!).

Stay tuned to see the finished quilt!

Oh Baby!

I finished the crib-size scrap quilt I’ve been working on. Here’s the finished quilt:





No one in the family is expecting a little one right now (pretty unusual for my HUGE family), so I’ll put this one up and save it or else check into donating it to Project Linus.
I used a REALLY cool tip to sew the binding onto this quilt. I saw this on “Sewing with Nancy.” I sewed the folded binding onto the front as usual for a double-fold french binding. Instead of hand-stitching the binding to the back (something I really enjoy doing, but just don’t have time for right now) though, I flipped the binding to the back and machine-stitched it from the FRONT:


Using invisible thread, you sew right in the ditch next to the binding (again, on the front). You’ll get a seam on the back that looks like this:



And, because this is invisible thread, you can barely see the seam. This is the best solution I’ve found so far for sewing a nice-looking binding by machine.

Odds and Ends

This is one of those “clean-up” posts; bits and pieces of things I’ve been doing, cool stuff, and WIPs.

A few weeks ago I won a blog giveaway from Lori of Laughing Girl Quilts. This was one awesome giveaway: fqs of Radiance fabric hand-dyed by Lori. And wow, are they gorgeous!

I don’t know a lot about this fabric, but it’s apparently a combination of silk and cotton. One side has a lovely sheen (the silk, I assume), the other a beautiful soft hand. Thanks again, Lori!

Here’s a piece of fabric I dyed a while back. I wasn’t crazy about this piece, and was going to use it for backing an art quilt. I went to iron it, and suddenly I saw a landscape in it, complete with trees and a stream. Can you see it? I think I’m going to experiment thread-painting this piece to enhance the landscape elements:

Here’s a piece I’m working on that involves paint, sheers, and FMQ with metallic thread:

Here’s a small patchwork quilt I’m making from the “leftovers” of the gem quilt:

In the centers of the blocks, you can really see the havoc wreaked by my 1/4” quilting foot being so far off. Anyway, it’s nice to use up those leftover blocks and scrap pieces.

And finally, more 6x6” weekly journal squares. The first one is from quite a while back; I wasn’t having much success preparing my own printable fabric, so I had to wait until I could buy some. This square is week 21, July 12-18. Influences: feeling tired, sick, and in pain. Too much heat and loneliness. On the positive side, I did start writing my morning pages again:

Week #28 was influenced by a new technique—learning to make yo-yos, and by wanting to attract a little more “color” (that is, good things) into my life. The blue braid around the edge represents my blue feelings that week:

Week #29 (last week) was influenced by my need for orderliness (and the clean craft room that brought about), along with relief that we finally got some heavy rains to cool things off and ease the drought (minutely) in Central Texas:

That’s all for now, folks!

Another Pieced Quilt

I finished the pieced patchwork quilt I’ve been working on; this one is a queen size, so I’m pretty sure I won’t be quilting it myself, at least not in the near future.

For this quilt I used a jelly roll, a layer cake, 4 fat quarters, and 2 yds. of fabric for the borders. I bought the precut fabric from the Fat Quarter Shop, and I was amazed at how quickly they shipped it to me—they really do send it out the same day! Of course, it probably helps that they’re right down the road from me in Manchaca, TX.

At any rate, here’s a pic of the fabric; this is Moda’s Objects of Desire. I’m not a shoe fan (some of the jelly roll strips and layer cake pieces have prints of high heels—presumably the “objects of desire”), so I left those out of the finished product:

I have to say that I LOVE using precut fabric. It makes creating a quilt top like this so incredibly easy. So far, I’ve only bought precut fabric (and coordinating yardage) on sale, so I don’t feel guilty about spending a little extra for the precut stuff.

I intended to use a pattern from the Jelly Roll Quilts book for this quilt, but I couldn’t find one that didn’t involve cutting up the layer cakes. What’s the use of buying precut fabric if you have to cut it again? Instead, I made up my own pattern using 10” blocks alternating with the 10” layer cakes. For each block I used 3 jelly roll strips, then cut the 4th strip larger from a fat quarter (I can’t remember how large—whatever comes out to 10” when added to 3 2-1/2” strips). Here’s a completed block:

And here’s a pic of the completed quilt top—well, sort of. This one doesn’t show the 5” inch border I added all the way around, but the top was so huge I couldn’t find any place to hang it to take another pic (this pic only shows the first 6 rows; there are 9 altogether):

Once I quilt it—or have it quilted, more likely—I’ll post additional pics of the whole thing. In the meantime, I’m off to catch up on the things that I’ve let slide—my weekly journal squares, foremost—and to straighten up the quilting room before I start another project.

Piece by Piece

I’ve finished another pieced quilt top; this one is from a great quilting book, Jelly Roll Quilts. I’ve never owned a jelly roll, but I wanted some fairly simple patterns that used strip piecing. For this quilt, I cut all those fat quarters I’ve had forever into 2-1/2” strips, and used some white-on-white fabric for the connecting strips (cut into 1-1/2” strips).

There were a LOT of seams in this quilt, and so it was pretty disheartening to realize that my 1/4” quilting foot isn’t really 1/4”, and my blocks were off. I was able to trim them and save the quilt, but if you look closely you can see some mismatched seams!

I decided to make this quilt before using the fabric I showed in my last post; I wanted a little more practice on making a pieced quilt, and I thought I wouldn’t mind “wasting” all those fat quarters if it didn’t turn out. I’m actually pretty happy with it. It took a week to cut and piece the top, so I’m too tired to quilt it now, but that will be my next big project.

I’ve enjoyed this “break” from feeling like I have to be creative. It’s been nice to have a pattern to follow, and rote tasks to complete step-by-step. I feel like completing these pieced quilts has ordered and centered my thinking a little, and now I'm feeling a little more anxious to get back to more creative projects.

In fact, I felt a real need to do something free-form and fast and fun. The other day, I stopped by my Mom’s house and saw all the fabric postcards I’ve sent her displayed in her hallway next to the family photos. I realized I haven’t sent her one in a while, so I thread-painted flowers onto silk and turned it into a PC for her:

I also owe a friend in Chicago a postcard, so I made this one from stitched paper:

As I mentioned a post or two back, the pieced quilts I've been making have been “practice” for the queen-sized quilt I want to make for our bed. I’m not sure whether I’ve worked up enough self-confidence to start on that one yet, or whether I need to make one more practice quilt first. I guess I’ll know when I get there!

View from the Top (Again)

The first time I made it a quilt, I likened it to reaching the top of a mountain in this now (slightly) more-familiar world of quilting. I still feel that way.

I’ve been a little embarrassed about this quilt, because it was so easily pieced out of large squares of fabric. I still wish I had put a little more effort into cutting and piecing the fabric, but now I know that I just didn’t have the self-confidence. Completing this quilt, though, has given me that confidence, so I have even bigger (meaning, of course “smaller” in terms of the piece size) plans for the next quilt. And so, here’s the quilt that I love not just for itself, but for everything it has taught me:

Making this quilt was just what I needed right now—no pressure to be creative, just a nice, solid project to take one step at a time. I finally used the fabric I bought a very long time ago just because I like it. Plus, we really needed a quilt for the guest room (the sofa in the picture above has a pull-out double-sized bed), so I feel like I’ve done something practical. And, as I said, I both learned a lot in the process of completing this quilt, and gained enough confidence to tackle something a little more difficult.

Now, I’m anxious to get started on the next quilt, and I’m trying to convert a double-sized pattern to a queen-sized one, and figure out whether I have enough fabric to manage that size. I see now why quilter’s complain about the math involved.

Here are some of the raw ingredients for the next quilt--fabric that’s been tucked in a drawer for a couple of years:

Stay tuned for progress notes and pictures!

Look Ma, No WIPs!

Just Kidding. Here’s the pile I moved off of the design wall and onto the sewing table:

so that I could use the design wall to put up the blocks for a pieced quilt:

Ok, they’re not really “blocks” so much as big chunks. But I’ve been feeling guilty about not using this fabric that I bought last year at the Houston show:

I knew that if I didn’t use it, my sweetie would probably bring it up at this year’s show (which is creeping up fast!) when I try to convince her that I NEED new fabric!

A couple of years ago, I promised my sweetie I would make a queen-sized quilt for our bed; we promptly went to the quilt shop and bought the fabric, which has been sitting in a drawer ever since. Truthfully, I’m scared I’ll mess it up because I’m just not that good at traditional, pieced quilts. I try SO hard to be careful when cutting the fabric, sewing the 1/4” seams, then pressing them. Something always seems a little wonky, though.

Plus, I don’t have a lot of patience when it comes to a lot of quilt pattern instructions. I puzzle over them and, when I finally figure out the first few steps, I feel like a kindergartener with a gold star on her paper. Then I realize I could have made an art quilt, 3 postcards, and an ATC in the time it took me to figure out the quilt instructions.

So, wanting to practice my quilting skills before I tackled the queen-sized bed quilt, I decided to start with a very simple pattern—just the big chunks of fabric stitched into columns, then the columns stitched together to make the quilt top. Here’s the completed top:

This is a double-sized quilt, which makes it the largest quilt I’ve tackled to date. It will be interesting to see how well I machine-quilt it, but I figure I’ll get a sense of what it will be like to tackle that queen-sized quilt!

To test the “test” quilt even further, I decided that last week’s 6x6” journal square (#24) should be a small, pieced quilt-lette using the same fabric:

The border on this square is actually the backing fabric for the large quilt, and the polka-dot binding isn’t related to the actual quilt at all—it just looked like fun, so I threw it on. I’m a little worried about the backing fabric; it seemed to stretch a lot when I sewed it into this square, so I’m anxious about how it will behave when I try to quilt the large quilt.

I'm torn about how to quilt the quilt. I go back and forth between free-motion quilting, and straight-line stitching on a diagonal. I do like to free-motion quilt, so I'll probably end up doing that (as soon as I work up the nerve!).

The queen-sized quilt pattern I'm going to use is much more involved, and uses strips of sewn-together wedges, which are cut out using a template--yet another thing to be nervous about!

Something Finished!

Last week I felt pretty awful and thought I might have to take a trip to the ER, but this week, miraculously it seems, I'm feeling much better.

I've started a new art journal--so far, I'm just gluing pages, painting backgrounds, that sort of thing. I'm also working occasionally in an art journal I started a while back tracing the "illness journey," but I can only stand to re-live the experience for so long, then I have to move on to happier things. Denial has always been my coping mechanism of choice :-)

And, every once in a while, I actually do some sewing! I get tired very easily so I work for a few minutes, take a long break, work for a few minutes, rinse and repeat. I'm grateful that I'm able to do that much.

Speaking of which, did anyone hear what Oprah had to say about her body, extra weight and all? Something to the effect of, "I'm grateful for this body, because it's done what I needed it to do, even after the way I've treated it." So, with that in mind, I just have to say that, illness and all, I'm still grateful for my body--it's here, it's limping along the best it can, despite how hard I've been on it all these years.

A while back, I mentioned a quilt I had finished; here it is! The background is a convergence quilt (from Ricky Tims' book) that I made a year or so ago. It seemed unfinished, somehow, which is the biggest problem I have with convergence quilts (at least as I've made them); they seem to lack any interest or focal point.

Recently, I cut out the floral appliqués (one black for the "shadow" effect, then the floral pieces from hand-dyes and commercial fabric), fused them to the base, and sewed them on. I then quilted the whole piece and added the binding and sleeve.

It feels good to have a finished piece!

Breathing Room

Well, a very merry Christmas was had by everyone, at least as far as I know. I made quilts for each of my (grown) kids, and I think they like them. My son got the blue-jean rag quilt (I LOVE the way this one frayed!).

My daughter got the pieced and machine-quilted quilt.

And I got a serger from my DP. I've always wanted a serger, but considered it an extravagance that I wasn't willing to shell out the money for. I love getting presents like this, since it's something I've really wanted but wouldn't buy for myself.

I took the rest of this week off, so I spent some time today learning to thread it and sewing some test seams. That can be really intimidating when you've never even seen a serger in real life, much less used one.

I also over-dyed the (previously dyed) turquoise fabric; I rubber-banded the fabric and used yellow Procion MX, and ended up with a green and blue tie-dyed effect.

I've had so many projects on the back burner for so long that now I can't decide what to work on this week; I'm afraid I'll waste all my time off just trying to figure out what to do next!

'Tis the Season . . .

for last-minute quilting. I've finished three quilts and have one in process that I haven't posted about here yet.

This is the first rag quilt I've ever made, and my DP, my dog, and I all fight over it. I'm obviously going to have to make another one after Christmas. It's made from flannel and we love it. It was super-easy and fast to put together--the hardest part, I think, was getting it washed at the laundrymat so the threads wouldn't destroy my machine.

The second quilt was from a kit that I bought last summer at a quilt show. It's an adorable Christmas quilt, and of course at the time I thought, "I have MONTHS to get this done." Ha. A couple of weeks ago, I decided I better get busy or we wouldn't be enjoying it until NEXT Christmas. Fortunately, it was very easy to piece. I machine-quilted it with an all-over stipple and invisible thread, which was much easier than I thought it would be. I had heard nightmares about invisible thread tangling and breaking, but I had no problems at all with it.
The third quilt is a gift, so I can't say anymore about it until after Christmas, except this: I HATE machine-quilting with polyester thread. Is it just my imagination, or does it make trying to get even stitches a nightmare?

The fourth quilt is also a gift, and I'm (fairly) confident I'll get it finished in time.

In between quilting, I took a break to try my hand at dyeing fabric. I've painted a lot of fabric, but never tried dyeing. The first attempt was with Procion MX red dye, and I was shocked at how it turned out; the more I looked at the fabric, though, the more I loved the tie-dye effect, so I tried to replicate it in turquoise. This was the result I had been expecting, but now I want to replicate the tie-dye look!

One for the Dog

When I was young and my Mom made pancakes, she would always say the first one was "for the dog," which was confusing at those times when we didn't have a dog. Nevertheless, what she meant was that, while the pancake was edible (I know, I snuck a bite once), it was the tester. It might look ugly, or be a little too doughy in the center, or maybe too tough. It was the one that she wouldn't serve to anyone because it always took one pancake to get everything right: the heat, the batter, the cooking time. But everyone knew the dog wouldn't care, and would love the pancake--no matter what it looked like, no matter that it might be a little under or over done.

I think the same thing happens in quilting.

This isn't my first quilt. The first one was blessed with a great deal of beginner's luck, I think, and when I gave it to my DP she swore it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. The second one was for my 7-year old grandson, who would probably eat the first pancake without even commenting on it, were I to serve it to him.

But I'm running out of people to give my quilts to who love me so much that they oooh and aaaah and get all shivery at my gift and pretend like there isn't a single thing wrong with the quilt. And believe me, there is plenty wrong with this quilt. Too much to list here in detail--or maybe I just can't bear the humiliation of pointing out every flaw in detail in such a public forum. Let me just say that I understand now why trimming blocks may not be such a good idea (especially when I'm no better at trimming blocks than I am at piecing them); and that yes, I probably should take that machine quilting class, if for no other reason than to learn how to correctly set my tension so that my top thread doesn't "bleed through" to the back fabric where I've free-motion quilted.

So, that just leaves the dog. In this case, the dog is Max (short for Maxine), who seems to like the quilt almost as much as she does pancakes. She doesn't seem to mind in the least that her new quilt has quite a few flaws. And, we both agree that she looks very nice perched on the quilt.

By the way: I said a month ago that I wasn't making any more pieced-block quilts; instead, I was going back to freeform, patternless quilt-making as with my first quilt. What I discovered is that I really don't like block quilts, but they're good for me. I can practice cutting, seaming, and pressing, and I know when I'm off because my blocks are off. I still don't know how NOT to be off, but at least I know I need a lot more work in those areas. So maybe I will occasionally make a block quilt, like this one--or better yet, not like this one, but like one that is right. I only have so many dogs.